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Headline says it all

WASHINGTON — Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

Don’t forget, the 2013 pledge was only made because Obama broke his vow to have it closed by January 2010. The real money quote:

One category — detainees cleared for release who cannot be repatriated for their own safety — is on a path to extinction: allies have accepted 33, and just 22 await resettlement. Another — those who will be held without trials — has been narrowed to 48.

Still, the administration has faced a worsening problem in dealing with the prison’s large Yemeni population, including 58 low-level detainees who would already have been repatriated had they been from a more stable country, officials say.

The administration asked Saudi Arabia to put some Yemenis through a program aimed at rehabilitating jihadists but was rebuffed, officials said. And Mr. Obama imposed a moratorium on Yemen transfers after the failed Dec. 25 attack, planned by a Yemen-based branch of Al Qaeda whose members include two former Guantánamo detainees from Saudi Arabia.

As a result, the Obama administration has been further entangled in practices many of its officials lamented during the Bush administration. […]

So even if the prison closes, we are committed to holding nearly 50 prisoners without trial as well as nearly 60 Yemenis who we are holding onto because we deemed their country too chaotic. This is not the rule of law. This is now on Obama’s hands. This broken pledge stings worse than any other he has issued not just because innocent men’s lives are being ruined, but also because this issue of whether we respect the rule of law is an existential one.